Author and media columnist for The New Yorker Ken Auletta is "the James Bond of the media world," wrote Business Week, "a man who combines the probing mind and easy charm of a top intelligence agent with the glamour that benefits the holder of a high-profile job." In ranking him as America's premier media commentator, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded, "No other reporter has covered the news communication business as thoroughly."

His award-winning "Annals of Communications" profiles have revealed, with unique intimacy, the inner-workings of such famous media personalities as Rupert Murdoch, Harvey Weinstein, Sumner Redstone, Michael Eisner, Barry Diller and Bill Gates. His profile about Ted Turner, "The Lost Tycoon," won the National Magazine Award.

His new book, Googled: The End of The World As We Know It, is a New York Times business bestseller. Business Week named it one of the best books of the year.

He wrote four other national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed and Glory on Wall Street; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway; and World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies.

Auletta is a regular guest on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose and Nightline. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire and The New Republic.

Mike Shatzkin is the Founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company, consultants to publishers and their trading partners. Mike has been actively involved in trade book publishing since his first job as a sales clerk in the brand new paperback department of Brentano's Bookstore on Fifth Avenue in 1962. He has written or co-authored five books and, in addition to being an author, has worked at every step in the publishing value chain: agenting, packaging, production, marketing, and sales. Mike has organized industry conferences on our changing business for two decades. He is the Conference Chair for Digital Book World, which had its inaugural event in New York in January and which will take place again in New York in January, 2011. Mike has also been the co-organizer of the Book Industry Study Group's annual Making Information Pay conference for the past three years. He has chaired events in London and Frankfurt and has spoken to industry groups in Canada, Australia, Spain, and Denmark. His blog, The Shatzkin Files at idealog.com/blog is one of the most closely-watched ongoing commentaries on digital change in trade publishing. Over the years, his clients have included all of the English-speaking world's leading publishers, key customers of theirs like Ingram and Barnes & Noble, and many suppliers, particularly of digital services.

Paul Aiken, a 1985 graduate of Cornell Law School, has been the executive director of the Authors Guild since 1996. Paul testified before the White House Task Force on Copyright and the Internet, participated in the Conference on Fair Use and testified before Congress on several occasions, most recently before the House Judiciary Committee in its hearing related to the settlement in Authors Guild v. Google. His commentary on the publishing industry has been published in Publishing Research Quarterly and the New York Times.

Authors Guild: The Authors Guild is the largest society of published book authors and freelance journalists in the U.S. The Guild advocates on behalf of writers' business interests in the areas of effective copyright, fair contracts and free expression. The Authors Guild also maintains alegal staff to review members' contracts and assist in disputes. Scott Turow is the president of the Guild; Judy Blume is the vice president. The Guild was founded as the Authors League of America in 1912.

Evan Schnittman is Managing Director Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital for Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Evan has over 23 years of publishing related business experience having held positions as an EVP at The Princeton Review, Senior Editor at Little, Brown, and VP of Global Corporate and Business Development at Oxford University Press amongst others. Evan speaks extensively on the key issues facing content companies in a digital world — across Asia, Europe and the US. His blog, BlackPlasticGlasses, is required reading for anyone wishing to understand book publishing in the digital age.

Dr. Robert Staats has been the Managing Director of VG Wort since January 2009. He performed his law studies in Bonn and Freibur and was a legal trainee in Berlin. His doctoral thesis was in copyright law. From 1994-2008 Dr. Staats was a judge and civil servant (Ministry of Justice) at the federal state of Brandenburg.

Wendy Strothman founded a Boston-based literary agency in 2003 to represent authors of significant books. Clients include Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists like Anthony Lewis, Yale historians David W. Blight and David Brion Davis, National Book Critics Circle finalist Martha Sandweiss, web-famous scientist Walter Lewin of MIT, former US poet laureate Donald Hall, and Harvard neurologist Frances Jensen. Before founding her agency, Strothman was Executive Vice President and Publisher of the Trade & Reference Division at Houghton Mifflin Company when the company garnered two Pulitzer Prizes, one National Book Award, three Caldecott Medals, and two Newbery Medals. Wendy oversaw publication of the Fifth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, children's books, and she edited authors such as Philip Roth, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. For seventeen years, she served on the Corporation of Brown University, most recently as Secretary and Senior Fellow. She serves on the boards of Deerfield Academy and of 826 Boston, an after school literacy program founded by Dave Eggers.

Lois F. Wasoff has established a legal and consulting practice specializing in copyright and trademark matters, with a particular focus on issues related to publishing. She works with publishing companies, not-for-profit organizations, individuals with publishing and intellectual property related concerns, and law firms seeking expert support in a specialized area of practice. Her particular areas of expertise include copyright law and policy and contractual, legal and business issues related to the development and distribution of content in traditional and electronic media for the trade, educational and professional markets.

Lois has played important roles in industry-wide initiatives through her representation of her clients on several committees of the Association of American Publishers, and at meetings and conferences held in the United States and abroad. She served as a member of the Section 108 Study Group, which was formed by the Library of Congress to examine how the copyright exceptions and limitations applicable to libraries and archives may need to be amended in response to the widespread use of digital technology. She is a past Chairman of the Copyright Committee of the Association of American Publishers, was until recently a Trustee and a member of the Executive Committee of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., and is the former chair of the Copyright Society's New England Chapter. Her clients have included Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, Macmillan, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (known as "CrossRef"), a trade association of over 600 scholarly publishers from the United States and Europe that was formed to facilitate online research in scholarly literature.

Until March of 2002, when she left to begin her own practice, Lois was Vice President and Corporate Counsel of Houghton Mifflin Company. Prior to joining Houghton in 1990, she was Senior Counsel at Simon & Schuster. Formerly a litigation attorney at Cowan Liebowitz & Latman, a New York law firm specializing in copyright and trademark matters, she began her career in 1975 when she graduated from New York University School of Law and joined the litigation department of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy.

Alexis Madrigal is the lead tech writer for The Atlantic where he recently launched their new Techology Channel. He is the lead writer as well as host. Alexis is co-creator of Longshot magazine, a publication created online in 48 hours with the help new internet tools and hundreds of people submitting content through the internet. The magazine was awarded the 2010 Knight-Batten Award for innovation. He also writes for the Pop!Tech blog. Madrigal is currently writing a book, Powering the Dream (forthcoming), on the lost history of green technological experimentation, what we learn from it and how it can help us build a greener future.